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PAUL FRIESEN, QMI Agency

WINNIPEG - The dark underbelly of hockey showed itself again this week, and I’m not talking about the low hit by Boston’s Brad Marchand on Vancouver’s Sami Salo.

Sure, that crossed the line, and Marchand will pay the price in the form of a five-game cheque.

But something potentially much more ugly reared its head, only to have gotten lost in the shuffle.

Canucks head coach Alain Vigneault dared go where nobody should anymore when he directed some not-so-veiled threats against Marchand.

“Some day he’s going to get it,” Vigneault told the Vancouver Sun. “Some day, someone’s going to say enough is enough and they’re going to hurt the kid because he plays to hurt players. And if the league doesn’t care, somebody else will.”

If that sounds eerily familiar, it’s because similar words came out of the Vancouver camp more than seven years ago, leading to one of the ugliest incidents in hockey.

I’m talking about the reaction to Steve Moore’s hit on Canucks captain Markus Naslund in February, 2004, which sparked talk of retribution immediately after the game, and all the way up to Todd Bertuzzi’s infamous act of revenge.

“There’s definitely a bounty on his head,” Vancouver’s Brad May said of Moore after the original hit.

“Clean hit or not, that’s our best player and you respond. It’s going to be fun when we get him.’’

And what a ball we all had watching it.

Despite the NHL’s attempt to calm things, the rhetoric ramped up the already vengeful mood in the Canucks dressing room, and when they met the Colorado Avalanche again three weeks later, hockey’s “code” was enforced — and Moore’s career was over.

But the beating the game took had just begun.

Bertuzzi faced a criminal charge and Moore, who’s still suffering the effects of a brain injury, filed a lawsuit. That case is finally headed to the courts next fall, where it’ll either overshadow the start of a new season or dominate weeks of headlines during a labour dispute.

The proceedings will also shine a light into the closely guarded confines of the NHL dressing room, where there have been suggestions Canucks then-head coach Marc Crawford talked about Moore having to “pay the price” between periods of that fateful game.

The message may have been subtle, but players, most of them steeped in the macho, eye-for-an-eye hockey culture, heard it loud and clear.

And here’s Vigneault, nearly eight years later, leader of that pious band of do-gooders, who wouldn’t dream of employing a player like Marchand, sauntering out to that same dark line, and across.

But nary a peep from the NHL.

Have we learned nothing?

The league should have a zero-tolerance policy on talk of retribution, subtle or not. There is no other sensible course, not after the damage done, and still to be done, by Bertuzzi’s revenge.

Vigneault deserves a suspension of at least as many games as Marchand, a decision that should have been as swiftly and publicly delivered as a Brendan Shanahan video, although no explanation should be required.

Because the NHL can’t afford another incident like the Bertuzzi/Moore one.